


Crazy For You (The Butterfly Room Remix)

by aralias



Category: Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: M/M, Madness, References to Shakespeare, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-19
Updated: 2011-04-19
Packaged: 2017-10-18 09:55:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/187659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aralias/pseuds/aralias
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It had been a brilliant plan, a complicated and extremely devious plan. It had been the type of plan he might well have thought better of if he'd had time to form a personality distinct from that of his predecessor, but he hadn’t.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crazy For You (The Butterfly Room Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [roachpatrol](https://archiveofourown.org/users/roachpatrol/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Any Time At All](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/2992) by roachpatrol. 



> Thank you to those who read it and suggested improvements, namely X_Los and Neveralarch.

It had been a brilliant plan, a complicated and extremely devious plan. It had been the type of plan he might well have thought better of if he'd had time to form a personality distinct from that of his predecessor, but he hadn’t. He’d only just remembered who he was.

The Doctor had stood there, a sheet around his shoulders and rainbow smears across his fingers and stared at the Master.

And the Master had said, "I have more candy in my van."

And the Doctor had smiled at him and said, "I love you."

*

The Butterfly Room stretches away into forever on all sides. In the exact centre (because the room is not infinite, despite appearances) is a patch of sweet pea blossoms, and in the centre of that is the Doctor.

He has come to this room because it looks exactly how he doesn’t feel. Underneath the illusion of a sun, he has spent a pleasant hour or so not thinking while he weaves together green stems and pale pink flowers. He has become quite good at not thinking over the last few months. He has also become quite good at basket weaving, he notes absently. An old woman once showed him how to make patterns from woven reeds. He’d been young, then, and impatient - more interested in whether she’d seen anything that might have been a yeti, than in basket weaving, but some of her teaching must have stuck. The wreath (which he has almost finished) is fit for a king of apparently infinite space, mad only when the wind is north-north-west.

He sees the disturbance in the butterflies’ flight pattern before he sees the Master. Then, in of the corner of his left eye, he sees the body of Bruce the paramedic, wearing the Master’s frown and a set of clothes the Imperial Dressmakers of Naroon made up for him. One of the Doctor’s hearts clenches while the other half-jumps like it’s missed a step, but the Doctor’s face (which he thinks could be expressive) shows none of this. He is very good at pretending not to feel like the Butterfly Room doesn’t.

The Master sits down next to the Doctor, careful not to squash the rosemary bush growing around the sweet peas, or the feathery rue. The Doctor pretends not to see him. He threads more flowers into the wreath, and smiles as a blue and brown butterfly lands on his left ring finger. The Master watches him.

"Do you remember Castrovalva?" he asks eventually, his voice full of hard vowel sounds and regret.

“I was wondering when that would come up,” the Doctor does not say. He does not smile kindly. “You don’t learn from your mistakes, do you?” he does not continue.

He watches the butterfly flit away, and pretends not to notice the wretched look the Master is giving him.

"Do you remember your children?" the Master asks.

“Cheap shot,” the Doctor does not murmur. Bringing up the pale blond walls of Castrovalva is only to be expected (frankly he expected it sooner), but the mention of his children is surely only to trick him into responding. The Doctor hasn’t played this long to lose now. The Master should know better than that, even if he hasn’t been told the rules.

He turns to the Master and sees in his face that the question was rhetorical. The Master is simply punishing himself. His deterioration has been even more rapid than the Doctor had predicted. A steep slide from his apparently too-sucessful hypnosis attempt to this moment in which he asks the Doctor (a man he used to yell at for neglecting their work in favour of people too young to talk or recognise him) whether he remembers his children, and expects not to be answered. In which he willingly accepts this as an improvement over the emotionless doll he tried to create one day when the Doctor wasn’t behaving himself. If it wasn’t for the plan, the Doctor would perhaps point out that slides are supposed to be fun.

As it is, he places the his crown of blossoms on the Master’s head, over the hair the Master has allowed to go un-greased, because the Doctor had thought it was in character to protest over how icky it was. He’d been making the wreath for himself initially. He’d been pleased with the image of himself wearing only flowers in his hair, like a mad fairy or a youthful Lear. The Master needs it more than him, though, the Doctor can see that. He knows he’s not mad (not more than usual, anyway), whereas the Master is slipping fast into madness without entirely realising it. He needs the symbols and the trappings of insanity: the wide eyes and the fairy crown.

Unfortunately the Master looks ridiculous in his wreath. The Doctor’s face was made for fey smiles and flower garlands; the Master’s was made for talking calmly to people in ambulances. It’s just bad luck that it’s ended up beneath these flowers, forced into an expression of infinite remorse. It was probably very good at talking calmly to people in ambulances.

What a terrible man the Master is, the Doctor thinks to himself sanely. Using a good man's body to murder and conquer and sit with someone who used to be his archnemesis in a fake garden is a horrible act - almost as bad as systematically breaking a man’s spirit by giving him what he wants. He must know he looks ridiculous, that pink will never be his colour and his face is too heavy for flowers.

The Doctor pushes him backwards into the rosemary, which smells beautiful as it digs into the Master’s skin through his robes.

The Master reaches up to cup his face. “My Doctor,” he says.

The Doctor smiles without meaning to, and lays his own hand over the Master's. A gentle breeze blows north-north-west, russling the flowers and making the Doctor think mad things like how much he adores this man who steals faces, murders, conquers and lies in fake gardens with someone who used to be his lover.

This is the cause, the Doctor thinks, the very root of his madness. He kisses the Master as gently as he might chastise a child. He is doing this for the Master’s own good. Not the universe’s (though he thinks it must be grateful to have got off so lightly these last few months), but because he loves the Master enough to wish him better than he was. It may have gone too far, though, he thinks as he pushes himself against the Master’s thigh and licks the inside of his mouth. Ace was always telling him he’d taken things too far, he thinks. Sweet peas brush against his forehead. That must have been why she left him, older and wiser and, the Doctor thought and still thinks, better than when she’d stepped aboard the TARDIS. And infinitely sadder, too, of course.

The Doctor pulls away slightly to undo the clasps of the Master's robes, and is pulled back almost immediately - gently but surely. The Master cannot bear to be without him, even as he cannot bear to be with what the Doctor has apparently become. It is pulling his wits apart.

What kind of a man has sex with his ex-archnemesis under false pretenses, the Doctor wonders as he kisses the Master’s closed eyelids and the tip of his nose, and the top of his lip and his chin, and the base of his neck. It is terrible, isn’t it, even if the Master will be better off, and the universe will be better off (collatorally), and if the Master deserves it for believing he wanted a docile Doctor to sit around the TARDIS, passing him tools and making weapons of mass destruction for the weekends. But then he had to be shown, the Doctor reasons as he rubs himself up against the Master’s erection, savouring the little broken moans from the Master’s mouth. Even if it has, perhaps, gone too far now to say, I was only feigning madness, I’m sorry. Only some of this has been real.

“I love you,” the Master tells him as they lie together afterwards, atop the bruised flowers and the Master’s discarded robes. His crown is slipping off his head. There is a blue and brown butterfly perched on his cheekbone, and a whole line butterflies sit along on his left arm. Bruce’s arm, the Doctor thinks, and then changes his mind. He thinks how he has rarely seen anyone so ludicrous and so lovely. He kisses the Master’s cheek and wonders how the plan ends.

"I know," he says. "Master. I know."


End file.
